#yall thought trust au jimmy was my healthiest jimmy????

[thetomorrowshow]

Whumptober 9 - Obsession

title: oddly enough, i seem to be alive

fandom: empires smp

TRUST AU!!!! (it's super long jsyk warning on opening the readmore)

cw: graphic self-harm

~

"Hey," Pix says, softly.

When Jimmy doesn't respond, Pix clears his throat. "Jimmy."

Jimmy just watches, entranced, as the scrape on his arm slowly heals black up, blood pulled back in and skin melting together.

It had been an accident.

He'd been lugging a large branch, and it had slipped and scratched down his arm. There was no way he would have done that on purpose.

But staring at where the wound had just been, Jimmy kind of wants it to happen again.

"Jimmy."

He blinks, looks up. Pix is watching him, brows furrowed in an expression that Jimmy can't quite read.

Jimmy waits, and after a long moment of studying him, Pix gives a little decisive nod. "I'll stay another day," he says, readjusting the branch in his arms.

"I—I thought you were just staying—"

"To finish one hut, yes, but I was just thinking—it's very possible that your first recruits will be injured. They may not be up to constructing anything. We'd better build two, just to be sure."

Jimmy nods. That makes sense. He understands that.

"How are the wounds feeling?" asks Pix a couple of moments later, after Jimmy has laid the branch in the pile, ready to prop them all up leaning against each other like a tent made of branches.

"Good," Jimmy says, too quickly. "They don't—they don't even hurt."

They don't, that's true. But if he thinks about it too hard, he can still feel that sword carving its way down through him and he wants to vomit.

So he doesn't think about it. Easy-peasy.

"And your ear?"

Jimmy's ears twitch on instinct, the movements of the left one cruelly limited.

He remembers, so long ago, fWhip touching that ear, thumb tracing over the delicate spines, his hold so terrifying that Jimmy did everything he said to avoid injury.

Then, he'd been afraid of a tear in the fin. It would have been almost impossible to stitch it back together straight, leaving an ugly scar.

He hadn't even thought of the possibility of half of it just being slashed off.

The cut has healed over, but he's missing half of his ear, most of the fin chopped away. Sound echoes in a strangely muffled way on his left side, and walking makes him a little nauseous. He doesn't think there's a way to fix it, though. It doesn't really hurt, it just unbalances him a little.

"It's fine," he says, rubbing the back of his neck a little self-consciously. "I'm fine. Thanks."

Pix is watching him again, he realizes as he looks up. Jimmy shrugs, looks away.

His desire for Scott to be here hasn't changed. But Pix had said something about how there's no way to contact Scott without it being seen by fWhip's spies, and his work here is more important.

Sure, he wants to rescue his people. But he doesn't see how that's so important that he has to stay hidden in the woods of the No Man's Land outside the Cod Empire's borders. Wouldn't it be better to go to Scott or Lizzie and get their help to free his lands?

But Pix saved him—somehow—and Jimmy will trust that he knows what he's doing.

That night, Pix lays out in his bedroll by their little campfire and tells Jimmy that if anything happens or he needs to sleep before his watch is over, to wake him.

And after Pix is long asleep, Jimmy sits by the fire and stares into the embers, fingers itching and every nerve jangling.

With a sudden rush of energy, he reaches into the fire and plucks out a charred piece of wood, which he holds to his forearm.

It burns—quickly, painfully, his fingertips and his arm, but Jimmy's no stranger to pain and he holds it there until it becomes too much to bear. When it does, he tosses the piece of wood back into the fire and watches his arm.

His skin is bubbling up angrily, red and blotchy, his finger and thumb black with soot and stinging. 

But after an agonizing couple of moments and a splash of water, the blisters start to sink back into his skin, fading away with every passing moment, until quite some time later, his arm has little more than a tiny red mark, sure to vanish in time.

Jimmy rinses his finger off with some water from their shared waterskin, finds the pads of his fingertips normal.

His heart is beating too fast. Is he breathing too fast? He thinks he is. He remembers the way the pain felt, but he can't feel it at all anymore. There's no sign of it. There's nothing to prove that he even felt it.

He died. He stopped breathing, and his heart slowed and eventually stopped, and he died, no matter what Pix said.

And what does he have to show for it? A thin scar on his back? A missing piece of his ear?

He just burned himself, badly, and now he can't even feel it.

Jimmy takes in a shuddering breath, pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. This can't—this can't be right. Nothing about this is right.

He stares again into the low fire, heart jumping at the possibility of doing it again. No one would even know.

He doesn't do anything, almost stuck there in indecision. And when the moon passes the predetermined point, he forces himself to stand and shakes Pix awake. Then he stumbles off to the pond to sleep, and just hopes that his head will be a bit clearer in the morning.

-

His old scars are beginning to fade.

He'd noticed it this morning, drying himself off after sleeping in the pond. There had been one, a nasty raised one on his forearm from when Joey broke his arm and it burst through the skin. Now it's faded into his skin, visible but not as dark as it had been, and his skin there is almost smooth.

There are others. The jagged one on his upper arm is nothing more than a thin line, the small brown scar on his ribs entirely gone. They're all slowly fading, some more like vague marks along his body rather than the ugly scars they once were.

He should be happy. He should be excited that his scars are fading, that his skin is clearing.

He isn't.

He panics, actually.

Jimmy used to look at himself in the mirror and hate his appearance. He would wish idly for his scars to miraculously vanish, if only to annoy Sausage. He would always wear a long-sleeved tunic to various meetings, ashamed of the many marks that a ruler oughtn't have.

But what he went through was torture. Torture, for several years, and then death.

He was tortured for years, and he has no proof.

Without even thinking, Jimmy grabs his new knife and carves carefully along one of the scars on his ribcage, pushing the knife in deeper and deeper as he can bear it.

He bites his lip to repress any noise, digs the knife in a bit further before yanking it out. There. That should do it.

Blood spills down his stomach, and Jimmy just stares at it, relishing the aching sting of the cut.

It hurts. It hurts a lot, actually.

But it feels so good. It feels like he's alive.

He makes quick work of his other scars, tracing the lines with the blade of his knife. And when that's all done, and his head feels a little woozy but his mind feels clearer than ever, sharpened by the pain, he stares down at his murky reflection in the pond.

He's absolutely covered in blood. It washes down his torso (and all over his body, really, the tally marks under his knee among others carved out), and Jimmy can really only feel glad that he hadn't put on any clothes yet. That's a sure way for Pix to find out what he's doing. Blood-stained clothes is a dead giveaway that someone is bleeding.

He's not really sure why he feels he needs to hide this. He just has some sort of idea that Pix wouldn't be all too happy about it, after all the effort he went through to make sure Jimmy survived.

It is a lot of blood, though, and Jimmy's fairly sure it isn't stopping soon, so he takes the scrap of cloth he has to wash himself with and wets it, runs it over his body.

It's water, apparently, that mostly fosters this new healing power. He can heal without it, but not very efficiently, and it will definitely scar. A damp rag should just act as a clotting agent, right?

It does—every cut scabs over, and Jimmy feels like something tight in his chest loosens as he looks down at himself, at his new old scars.

Perfect.

"Jimmy? Are you decent?"

Jimmy curses under his breath, dashes away the few tears that have gathered in his eyes. "No, no—um, give me one second!"

"All right, but hurry up, please—we've got another hut to set up, still, and I started designing a lean-to of sorts last night, so I might try that out. Also, are you all right if I come back later in the week with some tents? It might be more convenient to set those up in case of an influx of people."

"Yeah—sure, whatever," Jimmy calls in Pix's direction, pulling his tunic on over his head. "Sounds great."

"I was also thinking—I know we were talking about going for Bobsill first, but it may be best to go through farmhouses or hamlets on the border before trying to go to a larger village. That way, if Mythland has already reached Bobsill, it won't just be one man trying to infiltrate an army."

"Mhm," Jimmy says, probably not loud enough for Pix to hear. He cringes as his freshly-scabbing wounds stick to his tunic. Hopefully if he gets a bit of blood on his clothes, Pix won't notice it amongst the bloodstains already there.

He's come to hate these clothes, stomach turning every time he pulls them over his head. He died in these clothes, after all. He's washed them since, but the blood doesn't come out.

Pix had mentioned getting him something new to wear. Jimmy can't wait for that.

Then he just has to tug his boots on, and he can join Pix in building the next hut. His clothes chafe against his scabs, but that's more than okay. It reminds him that he's alive.

And the next morning, after Pix hugs him and leaves, Jimmy carves right back into his already mostly-healed scars.

-

Scott asks him, once, why his scales seem to be perpetually growing in. Jimmy panics, just shrugs and mutters something about scars.

He doesn't know how to say that he pulls them out in front of the mirror every morning.

It's a little like pulling a nail from the nailbed, but over the past month or so Jimmy's gotten good at wiggling them out quickly without making any sort of pained noises.

He only touches the scales that are trying to push through the scar tissue, of course. Those scars—the scars left from the Void—don't disappear. They don't fade with every swim, the patchwork marks stubbornly remaining on his face.

He doesn't mind that those ones don't fade. He doesn't want to have to stick a knife into his face every day.

But he does tug out the scales trying to grow in, every morning in the mirror (after re-scarring his body), before pinning his veil on and heading out for the day, holding himself carefully and hiding the winces at every touch from Scott.

By the evening, when they retire to their quarters, Jimmy has pretty much healed enough that the pain isn't an issue. He'll run a bath, then just rinse himself off enough that there aren't any scabs or lingering patches of dried blood, before he returns to Scott, looking as close to as he always did before.

It's exhausting, but it works perfectly. He spends every moment tired and pained, but the pain clears Jimmy's head and reminds him that he did suffer, that it was real. He won't let that fade away.

It works perfectly.

That is, until it doesn't.

One morning, Jimmy's in the washroom as he usually is, tongue sticking out a bit between his teeth as he digs his knife a little deeper into his side.

There must be some moisture in the air today or something, because his body keeps stubbornly healing this one wound. Jimmy wipes away some blood with a cloth, trying to get a clearer view of it.

It's already begun to heal again, the skin sealing up by itself. It's like his body is trying to tell him something. 

Something that Jimmy is resolutely going to ignore.

He pulls the knife out, blinks away a tear, and shoves it right back in—a little harder than intended—

Too deep, too deep—he knows instantly that he's gone too far, because his vision goes double and his stomach turns unpleasantly.

There's a knife, almost hilt-deep, in his side.

It's not the first time he's accidentally gone too far. He did it that first morning after they won—while his whole country prepared to kick out the occupying soldiers, he was passed out on the floor of the washroom, his body slowly healing itself until he was able to wake up and crawl into the bath.

He'd done it again a week later, while preparing to visit Rivendell. He'd gone too deep on his thigh, pierced that same artery that had made it such a dire wound in the first place. Again, he'd passed out until his body healed just enough for him to get in the bath.

And now here he is, knife way too far into his body, and he didn't even start any water running before cutting into himself.

Jimmy's fingers grasp the handle of the knife, but it's slippery with blood and he can't get a good enough grasp to do more than wiggle it a little, which does nothing but make him gasp out in pain.

Okay. No need to panic. He just . . . he just needs to. . . .

His knees buckle and he falls onto his other side, biting his lip as it jostles all his other wounds. This has happened before. He knows this has happened before. He just has to get some water.

His damp cloth is out of reach, hanging on the edge of the sink basin. The bath is out of reach of his trembling arms, and he doesn't think he'd have the strength to turn the faucet, anyway.

Jimmy's just thinking it might be best to just sleep here a moment, let his body do a bit of healing with whatever moisture is already in the air, when the door opens.

"Sorry, I—Jimmy!"

He blinks, sees three—two Scotts, looking down at him in horror.

"Hng," he slurs, attempting a greeting.

In an instant, Scott's beside him, right hand frantic as it lightly touches him all over.

"Is someone in the palace? Who—Jimmy, the knife—I won't let you die, it's all right, I just need—I need a healing potion, or something, I need—"

"W'er," Jimmy forces out past his heavy lips. "Jus' . . . jus' w'er."

"Water! Right, right, er—I am going to have to pull this knife out, sorry—I'll put pressure on it, and—I'll start the bath first, don't move—"

Jimmy, of course, doesn't move. He just lies there, beginning to feel a bit cold.

Being cold isn't his favorite thing in the world. There are a lot of better ways to be.

Then he cries out, because suddenly Scott is right there again, yanking the knife out of his side.

"It's all right, I'm going to lift you into the bath now—"

His world tilts and slides together, and Jimmy bites the inside of his cheek to keep from vomiting—

Then there's water—crisp, cool water, all around him, enveloping him. Jimmy sighs a little, shifts—oh, he's in the tub. Right. That's disappointing. He likes swimming.

No. No, he has to stay focused. He was . . . he was cutting himself, he was fixing his scars, and then Scott—

No. Scott can't see this, he can't know about what Jimmy has been doing because—he wouldn't understand—

Jimmy sits up, ignoring the pull of his various wounds. He's going to be normal, act normal, and just hope that Scott didn't notice anything.

A hand pushes on his chest, and he looks up to see Scott, worry creasing his face.

"You aren't anywhere near done healing, lie back down," he says, something terribly sad in his voice. "We'll talk after."

Oh. He doesn't like the sound of that.

But Jimmy lies back down, anyways, his head sticking out of the water, and watches as his wounds slowly seal back together.

-

"So."

Scott looks at him, eyes crinkled sadly. "So."

Jimmy shifts uncomfortably in his spot on the couch, his scabs rubbing against his tunic.

He doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to know what Scott thinks. He just wants to pretend this never happened, so he can go see his Rivendell tutor before heading home and leading his country.

There's a plate of food on his lap, eggs that Scott had scrambled for him. Something about protein being good for blood loss.

Jimmy stares down at it, pushing the eggs around with his fork. He's hungry, but he doesn't really want to eat. He's scared of what Scott will say.

It's kind of messed up to recarve his own scars every morning. It's really messed up. Which means that Jimmy's really messed up in the head, too. What kind of sick person cuts themself every day to make sure they don't lose reminders of pain?

"How are you feeling right now?" Scott asks after a moment. Jimmy's stomach lurches; he grips his fork a bit tighter.

"Fine," he manages.

Scott sighs.

Scott’s going to break up with him. Jimmy knows it, suddenly—who would want to be with someone who purposefully hurts himself?

Tears gather in his eyes. He doesn't know what to do. He can't fix this.

"How long," Scott says, voice carefully unwavering, "have you been . . . hurting yourself?"

A tear spills free onto his cheek. Jimmy opens his mouth several times, can't speak for the lump in his throat. Instead, he shrugs, scoops up a bite of eggs and shoves into his mouth, forcing his jaw to chew when all it wants is to open wide in a sob.

"Okay," Scott says, sounding almost maddeningly calm. "More than just today?"

Jimmy forces himself to nod.

"Since before everything?"

He shakes his head.

"That's good to hear. And, er, it's all right if you don't know, but . . . why?"

Another question that Jimmy can't answer. He thinks he could answer it, if he had asked himself in the mirror, but here, with Scott waiting to break up with him after he hears how terrible of an answer it is?

Jimmy swallows his mouthful of egg and valiantly tries not to cry.

"Well, darling—I want you to remember that I love you. Nothing that you say will make me hate you. I just want to help."

That's what Scott thinks. He doesn't know the thoughts that go through Jimmy's head every time he digs a knife into his body. He doesn't know that in some sick way, Jimmy wants the scars, wants the memories of all the hurt.

A cold, pale hand lays itself on his own hand, stilling his anxious jiggling of his plate.

"Look at me, please."

Reluctantly, Jimmy looks up, meets Scott's eyes.

Scott doesn't look angry. He doesn't look disgusted.

He just looks sad.

"I want to help you," Scott repeats slowly. "I can't help you if I don't know why you're hurting."

Jimmy can't say it. He can’t, he can’t face the way Scott will look at him—

"If you would prefer, you can talk to Lizzie or Joel about it," Scott offers, and. . . .

Jimmy's automatic reaction is to refuse, because Lizzie's his sister (and a terrifying twelve-foot sea monster) and Joel is his best friend, but then it strikes him that if he tells one of them, they could tell Scott, and then Jimmy wouldn't have to see his reaction.

Which is how, only two hours later, Jimmy's sitting on the same sofa beside Joel, the same plate of eggs still in his lap.

He's wearing his veil, now, so at least if he starts crying again, Joel won't see it.

His scars are itching to be reopened, just to make sure they don't heal over too much. He doesn't usually take a morning bath, so they've probably healed more than they should have. He wonders if he can excuse himself for the washroom, take a knife to some of them before talking to Joel. It always clears his mind, too. Then he could have this conversation without losing track of it.

Then he remembers that Scott took the knife when he helped Jimmy out of the bath, and to get another one he would have to go dig through his drawers, and that would be suspicious.

"Scott told me a little bit about what's going on," Joel says quietly, interrupting Jimmy's thoughts. "He says he walked in on you . . . uh, hurting yourself? Do you want to talk about that?"

No. He doesn't want to talk about that at all. He would, in fact, prefer it if everyone forgot it happened so that he could go back to his routine in peace.

But Scott is worried, and now Joel is worried, and Jimmy owes an explanation.

He also knows that if he won't explain to either of them, they'll bring in Lizzie, and he doesn't want to worry her, too.

Joel lets out a breath. "Okay. Cool. Well, was that a one time thing? Or have you done it before?"

He can answer that. That isn't a difficult question.

"Since—every day," Jimmy forces out, voice barely above a whisper, his throat constricting against his will. "Every day since I, uh, woke up."

He feels the sofa go still under him as Joel's knee stops bouncing.

"Sorry—every day since—Jimmy, that's got to be three months ago, or more! Why didn't you talk to anyone?"

Jimmy cringes. This is why he didn't tell anyone—he doesn't want people to freak out over his personal issues. "It's not a big deal," he mutters.

Joel laughs incredulously. "Not a big deal? You—you—what, trying to kill yourself isn't a big deal?"

"I'm not trying to kill myself," Jimmy argues, turning to properly face Joel.

Joel looks—not quite angry, but definitely heated, hands curled into fists and a bit red in the face. If Jimmy were any less stubborn, he would have cowed, returning to his cold plate of eggs and his half-hearted shrugs.

But Jimmy's stubborn, and a moron, and he doesn't like false accusations.

"Right, then what are you trying to do, huh?" Joel asks, hands spreading wide. "Because when Scott calls crying about how he found you covered in blood with a knife hilt-deep in your ribcage, you start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, your idiot brother-in-law and best friend just tried to commit suicide and nobody even knew there was a problem!"

"I'm—I'm not suicidal!" Jimmy sputters.

"You sound pretty bloody suicidal to me."

Jimmy takes a deep breath, hot tears prickling at his eyes. He didn't want to worry anyone with his stupid problems, and now everybody's worried.

"I'm not, okay?" he says. He grips his long robe in his gloved hands, twists the fabric between his fingers. He doesn't even try to stop the plate when it slips off his lap, falling to the carpet with a muffled thunk.

"It's just—look, it's hard to explain."

"Start at the beginning, maybe," says Joel irritatingly, crossing his arms.

Jimmy swallows. "Okay. Um, so I died, right?"

"I do remember giving your eulogy, yeah. I also seem to remember you telling us that you didn't actually die."

"I basically died," Jimmy waves. "My heartrate went down too low to register as alive, so I died. And—and suddenly I'm awake, in—in a ditch, and just start limping my way across fields in the middle of the night as I feel my internal organs just sloshing about—"

"Gross—"

"—and Pix found me, and I almost died again, and I learned that I could heal in water."

Joel nods wisely. "Being a terrifying sea demigod, and all that."

"I didn't know any of that yet. But the longer I spent in water, the more healed I got—and then, the next day, I noticed my—my scars started to fade."

He pauses, not entirely sure how to proceed. Joel doesn't say anything, just waits.

"I couldn't let them fade," Jimmy says eventually, and his eyes slide away from Joel's face and down to the floor. "I—I know, it's messed up, but it was like—the only proof that I had been hurt was disappearing before my eyes, and I couldn't—I couldn't let that happen. So I—I started carving my scars. Every morning. To keep them from going away."

Silence.

"Why," Joel says slowly, "on this great bloomin' earth, would you do that?"

Jimmy cringes. He sounds angry. It's usually pretty funny when Joel gets angry, but it's definitely not something Jimmy can handle right now.

He doesn't even know how to explain it. He doesn't know how to put reasoning to his terrible actions. He's a ruler, and a good thousand years old or more—he ought to know better!

"Because," Joel continues when he doesn't answer, "I know that is not the way Lizzie raised you."

"You weren't there," Jimmy points out.

"Yeah, well, you can't even remember it, so let's assume I'm right. My wife wouldn't encourage you to hurt yourself because you feel some sick need to have scars—"

"I was gaslit for years," Jimmy interrupts, standing. Joel doesn't understand—nobody understands— "They convinced me that all the stuff I went through was my fault, and the only reason someone realized it wasn't was because of my scars! The only proof I have that it wasn't my fault is on my body, and I can't let it just fade away!"

"So you mutilate yourself." Joel stands as well, eyebrows low in a glower.

"I don't—" Jimmy pulls at his hood, wishing it was his hair. "It's not—"

He can't focus, he can't do this, his head is all twisted around and he's tired, tired from already having to practically heal himself back to life this morning, and he just knows that some of the scars are more healed than they should be at this time of day so he ought to cut into them just to make sure—

"I have to go," he mumbles, because that's all he can think of, he just has to get away to somewhere private and quiet where he can cry and cut in peace.

He starts to leave, but Joel catches him around the chest. "I don't think we're done talking! We need—"

"I have to go," Jimmy says again, and now there's tears gathering in his eyes and he can't do this—

He pushes past Joel and out the door, into the hallway, and from there he makes a break for it, running, robes flapping around his ankles, down as many confusing corridors as he can until he finds himself in some kind of cellar, barrels lining the walls, a cozy light flickering from bracketed torches.

There's nobody else here, as far as he can tell, so Jimmy curls up in a corner beside an empty barrel and buries his face in his knees.

He cries for a while, veil sticking to his cheeks, just letting out all the terrible feelings of getting caught and having to explain and being so twisted in his mind, all the shame and guilt and disgust. And when he feels that all his tears are gone, he digs his sharp nails into a shiny pink scar on his forearm, watches as blood beads up then streams down his arm with a growing calmness.

This is sick. He shouldn't find peace in hurting himself. He shouldn't have to do this to feel like he's actually alive, and not some undead creature.

Footsteps.

Jimmy pulls down his sleeve as quickly as he can, tugs his glove back on. And when the shadow of someone rounds the corner, he sees Scott.

Scott offers him a smile, he can tell. Even with the veil on, with the teary red eyes, Jimmy can tell he smiled.

Scott sits down beside him, far better at sitting gracefully with a skirt on than Jimmy will ever be. He sits there, quiet, their knees just barely bumping against each other.

"Your arm is bleeding," Scott says after a couple of long minutes.

Jimmy, fully knowing that his arm is bleeding, looks down. Sure enough, there's an ugly splotch of red against the pale green of his sleeve.

"Oops," he says dully, word a little distorted by his stuffed-up nose.

He's kind of beyond caring, at this point. Nobody understands. Why would anybody see this wonderful healing magic as a curse, like he does?

"I talked with Joel," says Scott cautiously.

Jimmy waits.

Scott waits, too.

Historically, Jimmy is not a very patient person. It usually takes about thirty seconds for him to give in when Scott is waiting.

But his mood has swung from terrified and upset to numb and indifferent. So he doesn't say anything, and after a bit, Scott continues.

"I'm going to be having a long talk with him about handling matters of mental health," Scott says, anger suddenly bursting from him in a wave of cold air. "He went about that in entirely the wrong way. I'm sorry for the hurt he's caused."

Hurt? Joel didn't really do anything, he just . . . he just responded in the way a normal person would. He didn't understand, and that's exactly right. Nobody should understand something this horrible. Some days Jimmy doesn't even understand it.

"I want you to know that I love you," says Scott. "I'm not going to stop just because you're struggling. I want to help you."

He'd said something similar this morning. Jimmy just shrugs. He's not willing to hope that Scott would actually be willing to help. Not if he knew the full story.

"Joel said something about you trying to stop your scars from healing?"

Right. He'd better explain, then, let Scott know upfront everything that's wrong with him.

"My body heals, right?" he says quietly. "And—and my scars were healing. And it scared me. I didn't want them to heal."

"You hate your scars, though," Scott puts in. Jimmy doesn't look at him, keeps his eyes trained on the floor. "You told me that you—that you're ashamed of them. Why did you feel like that?"

Jimmy bites his lip, searches for whatever it was that he'd told Joel.

"They hurt me for a really long time," he decides on eventually, and he's frustrated when tears start to burn behind his eyes. He literally just finished crying, he doesn't need to do more. "And I thought it was my fault. Until you told me it wasn't, and you only knew that because of my scars."

Scott makes a small humming noise. Jimmy looks up, makes eye contact briefly (he sees nothing but grief and love) before turning back to the floor.

"If they fade, there's nothing to prove that I went through any of that. And I know that's stupid, and messed up, but I couldn't—I couldn't just let that go. So I started . . . re-carving them. Just enough every morning that it would scar over again, and then by the next morning I could do it again. I'm sorry."

"And this morning?"

Jimmy shrugs again, idly wipes away a tear. "Accidentally went too deep. It's happened a couple of times. Not fun, of course—" he shudders, remembering the burning pain and the cold and the blurry vision— "but nothing that won't heal itself. I'm usually very careful about it."

A burst of cold from Scott, one that almost feels like fear on the back of Jimmy's tongue.

"Is that all?" Scott asks, voice trembling just the slightest bit.

Is it all?

Jimmy certainly wants it to be all. He doesn't want to have to cause Scott any more heartache.

And he remembers, vaguely, that first night conscious, Pix fast asleep, and how he held a hot coal to his arm just to watch himself heal. He remembers how the pain made him feel alive.

And just now, his fingernails digging into his arm to calm himself.

"I think so," he says.

Then he's utterly taken aback when Scott leans over and wraps him in a hug.

"Tell me if this hurts, okay?" Scott mumbles into his shoulder.

It does, a little bit. But Jimmy just puts his arms around Scott, awkward as the leaning hug is, and holds him close, as his instinct dictates.

He loves Scott. He loves him so, so much. He can't wait until they're married.

If they get married.

After a good minute, Scott pulls back, readjusts so that he can lean against Jimmy. Jimmy, naturally, lays his head atop Scott's.

"I'm not upset with you," Scott says, sounding a little like he's crying. Jimmy doesn't move to check, his heart leaping at the words. "I'm not mad at you. I love you so much, okay? I'm making a promise every day to stick with you, and I'm not breaking it."

Jimmy's breath chokes in his throat.

Scott isn't going to break up with him, probably.

And Jimmy is going to do everything in his power to make sure he never does. Even if that means stopping cutting. He'll do whatever it takes to be good enough for Scott.

"I have elves that work in mental and emotional health," Scott says. "I can get you in for an appointment today."

Does he want that?

There's something wrong with his head if he actually wants to cut himself (like he does right now, healed cuts itching to be reopened), and he wants to be better for Scott, so he probably should see someone who's actually trained for help.

But he doesn't really want to. He doesn't want to talk to anyone else about this. He doesn't want to lose his scars.

"Maybe," he hedges. Scott gently takes his chin, moves his head a bit further away to face him.

Reluctantly, Jimmy looks up into his eyes, the rest of his face obscured by the veil.

Scott's eyes are their normal, beautiful ice blue, lovingly soft yet determined.

"That is not a 'maybe'," he says firmly. "That is non-negotiable. You are going to try to get better, and I am going to help you, but you aren't going to stay like this. So I'll get you the appointment, and then we can treat the rest of the day like it's normal, if you like. But right now we're figuring this out."

That sounds like a lot of hurt.

But somewhere, deep down, he's really sick of stabbing himself.

"You're mean," grumbles Jimmy, resting his head back on Scott. "I've never done anything like this to you."

"You literally made me hug you that one time," Scott says drily. "Remember?"

Jimmy forces a laugh. "What, when you were afraid you were gonna freeze me?"

"And you knew that I could do anything if I put my mind to it," continues Scott. "Including control my freak ice powers. And I know you can control this, all right?"

Control is an interesting word, but. . . .

Jimmy nods. He can . . . he can try.

And for now, he leans on Scott, and wishes everything was just a bit easier.

-

It's hard.

It's hard to let go.

"Jimmy, what are you doing?"

Jimmy bites his lip. His health advisor told him to ask Scott for help when he got self-harm urges, and here he is with blood running down his torso and a knife held over his collarbone.

What's he supposed to do?

His health advisor also told him to not lie if he cut.

He didn't ask Scott for help, so he might as well follow the second rule.

"Jimmy?" Scott asks again, knocking on the closed bathroom door. "What are you doing?"

"Um," Jimmy says, looking down at himself. "I'm cutting?"

"Jimmy, unlock the door."

Jimmy sighs, guilt rising in his throat. He's not trying hard enough. He really isn't.

He doesn't want to be better.

He crosses the room to the door, pauses for just a moment to dig the knife into the skin above his collarbone, hissing between his teeth as it smarts. He pulls up a little chunk of skin as he withdraws the knife, rubs the blood from his hand onto some unbloodied patch of skin on his stomach, and opens the door.

Scott's waiting there, arms folded, and Jimmy can see in his face the way his heart breaks when he takes in the violent scene that is Jimmy's body.

"Sorry," Jimmy mumbles, face heating with shame. "It was a rough morning."

Which is true. He'd woken up with the itch under his skin, and then he'd had to message Joel and tell him he was fine after being entirely out of contact for the past week, which had been terrifying and made him feel out of control somehow, and then he saw that the scar above his elbow that had once been so gnarled and raised was nothing but a brown mark on his skin, and he hadn't been able to hold back the urge any longer.

Which is how he found himself here in the washroom, shirtless and veil-less and trousers rolled up above his knees, covered in blood as he'd slowly quieted the buzzing of his mind by cutting into himself again and again.

"Oh, darling," Scott says mournfully. He heads toward the sink basin and Jimmy's wet cloth there. "Let's get you cleaned up, all right? Then we can schedule an extra appointment with the health advisor."

Jimmy doesn't move when Scott beckons him to the sink, though. He just stares down at himself, at the blood leaking from the six or seven deep cuts he's already carved.

"Jimmy?"

It's terrible. It's absolutely horrible, and Jimmy's insides twist awfully when he says it, but it's all his mind is stuck on.

"I wasn't finished."

Scott tilts his head. "What?"

Jimmy flexes his fingers on the knife hilt. "I—I wasn't done. I can't just, just stop in the middle."

Scott looks at him. Just looks at him, eyes scanning Jimmy's body in a way that makes him want to squirm and shy away.

"All right," Scott says eventually, and he leans against the basin. He waves a hand. "Continue."

Jimmy blinks. He didn't expect Scott to agree. He kind of expected him to forcibly take the knife away and send him straight to his health advisor.

He waits, knife poised above his sternum, ready to make a quick, long cut. Scott doesn't even move.

Well, he isn't going to do it while Scott is right here. That's—that would be awful.

"Um. . . ." He looks at the door, then back at Scott. Scott folds his arms.

"I'm not leaving," he says, settling in a bit. "Either cut in front of me or don't do it at all."

He can't do that. He isn't going to hurt himself in front of Scott.

But it's the only option if he wants to finish re-carving his scars.

Jimmy lifts the knife again—at some point it had fallen to his side—and sets it on his sternum, ready to drag it down.

He tries not to look at Scott, but he sees him flinch out of the corner of his eye—

He lets the knife fall back to his side. He can't do it. Not with Scott here. He can't make Scott watch that.

He knows why Scott won't leave, but it seems stupid. Why can't he just let Jimmy finish cutting in peace?

"Sure you can't leave?" he tries half-heartedly. Scott raises an eyebrow.

Right.

He can agree, give Scott the knife, pour some water on his wounds; or he can get angry, yell at him, run out and finish cutting in peace.

The second option, while certainly appealing, is quite possibly relationship-ruining. He's always done his best to rein in his stubbornness with Scott, and he's learned in recent months that it's frequently better and safer to not fight.

Even though he twitches toward the door, even though the knife feels so right against his skin, even though there's nothing stopping him, he chooses the first.

He isn't going to do it happily, though, and he levels a glare at Scott (who just raises his other eyebrow) before stumping across the washroom and holding the knife out, hilt-first.

"Here," he grumbles. "Hide it, or whatever you did with the first one."

Scott takes it, a smile playing on his lips that's some combination of relieved and self-satisfied. Jimmy rolls his eyes.

It drops quickly, though, as Scott picks up the washcloth and sits Jimmy down on the side of the tub, cleaning his wounds one by one.

"I thought you were supposed to come to me when you felt urges," Scott says quietly, pulling back the cloth as the cut on his collarbone begins to slowly mend itself. "I was just in our room. You wouldn't have been bothering me."

Jimmy sighs, purposefully drawing it out so that Scott knows just how annoyed he is. "I dunno. Just needed to fix my scars. Didn't want you to stop me."

"I'm sorry. I don't know how hard this is for you, but I need you to come to me even when you don't want to. Or—if not me, someone. Your advisor, or Lizzie, or someone. All right?"

He's right.

Jimmy doesn't want him to be right. He wants him to be nice.

It isn't Scott's kindness that makes him want to marry him, though. It probably isn't one of the first qualities that anyone would associate with him. He may want Scott to be nice about this, but he's far more likely to be right—which is, sometimes unfortunately, one of his prominent qualities. He always seems to be right.

"Okay," he says begrudgingly. "I'm fine, though. It doesn't actually hurt me."

Scott scoffs. "Right. It doesn't hurt to cut? At all?"

"Well, yeah, it hurts, but not permanently—"

"Just because you heal well doesn't mean damage isn't permanent," Scott tells him, frowning at a wound that won't close. He reaches into the medicine chest beside them, pulls out a bandage. "I would say this has been very hard for you emotionally. For others, too. And you can't tell me that almost dying every so often is healthy."

Scott is, again, right. Regular and severe amounts of pain are bad for the psyche, according to his health advisor.

Jimmy sighs again, less intentionally obnoxious. "Why are you always right?"

Scott smiles, gives him a little kiss on the cheek. "It's my job as your future husband. Somebody has to take care of you."

"I'm still not happy with you, mister, but . . . it's good to know one of us knows what he's doing."

"I'll keep doing my best," Scott declares. "But you have your moments, Jimmy."

Jimmy snorts. "Right. Honestly, if I looked at the two of us for help, I'd definitely choose the savior king who took down a demon over the guy who died a couple months ago."

"You're forgetting that I basically died, too," says Scott. "We're both just that guy. And you're a demigod who single-handedly kept an empire alive, so don't sell yourself short."

Jimmy lifts his arm when Scott taps it, lets him treat a cut on his side.

"I don't know if you know, but you're kind of a local hero," Jimmy jokes. "Kind of hard to measure up to."

Scott chuckles. "Yes, I think I figured that out when Katherine showed me the new line of Smajor dolls at her local toy shop. Or maybe when Gem told me that her students were dying their hair blue? Or maybe when I was issued an official apology from the citizens of the Grimlands. There, all done. You can start getting dressed, I'll clean up in here."

Jimmy stands, grimaces at how stiff his wounds already feel. He would offer to help—that is his blood on the floor, after all—but he always feels a little lightheaded after cutting and it takes him long enough to get dressed, anyways. Better to let Scott take care of this, and that way Jimmy won't accidentally pass out while leaning over to clean the washroom floor and he also might be ready to leave right when Scott is.

He heads toward their shared closet, hand hovering over his favorite green tunic (he usually belts it over a brown long-sleeved piece to keep in line with the betrothal modesty laws) before choosing one of Scott's favorites, a sky-blue robe with gold leaf trim and wide sleeves, which Jimmy chooses to wear over his brown long-sleeved shirt, knowing that they absolutely won't match. Scott will be embarrassed and annoyed at Jimmy for wearing his clothes in public, and Jimmy's definitely still feeling like acting obnoxious.

Sure enough, Scott glares at him all through the political breakfast of that morning, when the elven lords and ladies eye Jimmy and barely restrain giggles.

And Jimmy ignores the itching of his scars and smiles.

-

It's only two days later, and he's about to cut again.

The itching is so strong, and Jimmy, though avoiding mirrors for now, catches a glimpse of his reflection in the pool that morning and can't help but notice how light his scars are.

He has a knife socked away behind one of the never-read books on his shelf. He's taken to hiding any knives he can find (there's at least three in his room, in various hiding places) and he goes so far as to pull out the book and stare at the knife there.

He made it an entire week, and now he can't go two days?

He's stronger than this. He needs to fight this urge. He doesn't want to, but he also, logically, does not want to cut.

Which is nice, actually. He's been craving it for so long; it's nice to genuinely not want to cut. Even if it's just because he doesn't want to let Scott down.

So how on earth is he meant to deal with this, when he's supposed to be studying in their quarters for the next two hours and he can't stop thinking about the knives he has?

Scott's in a meeting about rebuilding assistance with a representative of the Undergrove, so Jimmy can't just go hang out with him. It would be both illegal and improper to have an unallied ruler present at such a meeting.

He'd come up with other such solutions at the insistence of his health advisor, in case Scott wasn't available at any given time. But none of those options are very feasible right now, either—he could take a walk but would just end up returning here, still needing to do his studies. He could call Lizzie, but then he would need to explain the situation and he still hasn't found the guts to tell her of the matter. He could instead do work for his empire—he and Scott are going to be returning there in just a couple of days—but there's not really anything remote that he can do that hasn't already been done. And his last option is to take a nap, but he doesn't think he'd be able to sleep with this pulling at his brain.

Whatever he does, he can't stay in this room, Jimmy decides. It's too much of a temptation. He'd be much better off somewhere else, somewhere people are watching and he has to act normal.

It's almost physically difficult to make himself leave, but Jimmy grabs his books on the history of musical tradition in Rivendell and his study journal and leaves the room, wandering the palace until he finds the meeting room where Scott currently is.

He sits outside the room (a servant pulls a chair into the hallway for him, despite his insistence that he didn't need one, that he was fine on the floor) and does his best to study while he waits for his fiance to have a break.

After about an hour, he's startled by the door opening, a guard leading the Undergrove representative into the hall and away, followed by others from the meeting.

Jimmy waits until all the official-looking people have filtered out, muttering to each other and shuffling papers. Then he pokes his head in, finds Scott sitting in his grand chair at the head of the table, Ilphas at his side. They're murmuring with each other, examining papers before them, and Scott rubs his eyes and lays his face in his hands.

Jimmy doesn't say anything, but Ilphas looks up, raises their eyebrows, and stands, patting Scott lightly on the shoulder.

"You'll cheer him up," they mutter to Jimmy as they pass on their way out. "The meeting is on recess, you have fifteen minutes."

Jimmy nods, sidles into the room. Scott looks up when he gets close, lines around his eyes softening.

"Hi," Scott says as Jimmy takes Ilphas's vacated seat. "How has studying been?"

Jimmy thinks of his time in the hallway, trying desperately not to roll up his sleeves just to scratch at his arms, or head back up to his room to fix his scars. It had been a constant struggle, and he hadn't gotten more than page read, the words blurring before his eyes.

He hums noncommittally, taps his gloved fingers on the table before him. "How was the meeting?"

"Good, I think," Scott says, glancing down at his papers. "Just difficult. Our alliance with the Undergrove is about as strong as it can get, which is always good. The problem is, I have an empire of my own that was under enemy rule to take care of, and we're spread thin enough with other allies. We're trying to figure out what Rivendell has spare of that the gnomes could actually use. There are at least five other people who need to be present for this, though, so it may go on for several days."

"Hm." Jimmy shifts a bit, ready to preemptively wince when his stomach presses against the table, but there's no wound there.

He hadn't carved it open, after all.

Instantly, Jimmy feels his entire body break out into sweat, the itching becoming a hive of ants crawling under his skin.

He needs to fix his scars. He needs to cut, or else they'll disappear and they're already starting to disappear and he can't stand it.

He isn't supposed to be cutting. He's supposed to distract himself.

But Jimmy's doing all of the right things! He left the room with the temptations, he tried to focus on something else, he found Scott. He did exactly what his health advisor told him to do, and it didn't work. He just needs to fix his scars, he needs to leave the room and go get his knife and lock himself in the washroom—Scott would never know, he knows how to hide it, he could just get it done—

"—entirely confidential, of course," Scott is saying distantly. "But basically, Shelby's afraid that—"

"Scott," Jimmy interrupts, voice too loud. Scott looks up from the table, and Jimmy just knows his eyebrow is raised, even if he can't well see it. "Yes, darling?"

Right. He isn't even going to think about it, because if he thinks about it, he'll chicken out, he just can't let Scott down.

"I am about to cut myself," Jimmy says, detached and calm. "There is a knife on my bookshelf, second shelf behind the red book on the left. There's another one between my mattress and my bedframe. Could you please remove them?"

Scott stares at him for a moment, before shoving back his chair. "I—yes, of course—are you all right if I leave you here?"

"Maybe leave me with Ilphas," Jimmy forces himself to say, despite the way his head screams at him. If he's alone, he can at least scratch himself with his sharp nails. "I—I shouldn't be alone."

He should be letting Scott rest during this break, not bothering him with his dumb mental issues. He should actually be a normal adult for once and handle his own problems.

But Scott taps his shoulder as he passes by. "Thank you for coming to me," he says seriously. "You did everything right. I'll see you in a moment, and I'll send Ilphas in here."

Then he's gone, and a moment later, Ilphas ducks back into the room.

"Milord," they nod to Jimmy. Jimmy nods back, tugging his gloves up a bit from where he'd started to subconsciously pull them off.

Jimmy doesn't speak. Ilphas looks awkwardly between him and the hall, then, with the uncomfortable air of forcing a conversation, says, "The music of Rivendell? How do you find yourself enjoying it?"

"The—the music itself, or, uh, the study?"

"The study," they clarify. Jimmy chews on his lip for a moment.

"It's strange, studying music," he says. "I guess I didn't think about the fact that people must do it."

"How did Cod music come about?"

Jimmy shrugs. "I don't know. I think I pioneered it, though."

Ilphas tilts their head. Jimmy does not elaborate.

He does vaguely remember tying two clam shells together to make a noisemaker, one that had quickly spread in popularity and he still sees as a percussion instrument in Cod culture. Why study Cod music when he was there for its development?

"How old do elves get?" Jimmy asks suddenly as the thought occurs to him—are there elves here who might have seen the development of their culture, as Jimmy had seen his own?

"One thousand and two-hundred is the oldest an elf has lived to be," Ilphas says, sounding weirdly proud. "We are among the longest-lived of the species of the earth. Even the fae tend to live for under four hundred years. The gnomes have a lifespan slightly shorter than humans, and the inhabitants of the ocean and the Codlands—do correct me if I'm wrong—do not commonly live longer than one hundred and fifty years, and often shorter, depending on the breed. Which is why elves have historically kept to themselves, and rarely married outside their own—there is no one who can match our lifespan."

It almost feels pointed. "Well, you won't have that problem with me," Jimmy says offhandedly. He so badly wants to tear through his sleeve, stab his pointed nail into his upper arm. He can't stand this, he has to go fix his scars, he has to stop Scott from taking his knives.

He takes in a long, slow breath. He can control this urge until it passes.

He blinks, and realizes that Ilphas is frowning at him.

"Pardon my asking, milord, but is the Cod lifespan not typically under a hundred years? Lord Smajor will likely live to be over a thousand, praying all goes well in his reign."

Oh. Right.

"I'm . . . I'm kind of older than I look," Jimmy says awkwardly. "I'll . . . I'll probably outlive him, honestly. If all goes well in—in my reign."

"Outlive Lord Smajor?" Ilphas sputters. "Perhaps, if he were already well-advanced, but he is barely an adult! Aeor willing, he will—"

"I'm back, thank you, Ilphas," Scott says, entering the room. "Apologies, it was urgent. Do you mind if I have a moment alone with my betrothed? And," he adds, as Ilphas inclines their head and moves to leave, "give us ample warning before entering again. Five minutes alone?"

"Five minutes," Ilphas agrees, casting one more confused look toward Jimmy before leaving and closing the door behind themself.

Scott barely hesitates. He crosses the room like he has an urgent mission and sweeps Jimmy up into a hug.

Jimmy can't help it; he smiles, throws his arms around Scott's neck.

"I'm so proud of you!" Scott says, and he lets go of Jimmy only for a moment to release the clips on both their veils, letting them slip down.

Scott isn't kidding—his face is positively beaming, as tired as he still appears. Jimmy's really not sure why. He hadn't even done anything, except want to hurt himself. "I didn't do anything special," he mumbles.

"You came up with a plan, and you stuck to it," says Scott. "You took initiative by asking me to remove dangerous items from your room. You fought your addiction to get help. That's incredible, Jimmy!"

But it isn't. He didn't do anything.

And he doesn't like that word.

"It's not an addiction," Jimmy says, looking away. "It's just me being dumb. Don't—don't call it an addiction when I could stop at any time, I just keep choosing to mess up."

Scott frowns. "Jimmy, you came in here because you were fighting an urge to self-harm and you needed me to make sure you didn't. Do you want to cut?"

Does he?

To some extent, he does. He wants to check on his scars, make them dark and ugly again, tug the shimmering scales out of his face and from his knuckles. He can't lose this.

But Jimmy's so tired of hurting. He doesn't want to be trapped in this endless loop of nearly killing himself every morning for the next however-long he lives.

He feels like a child, trying to lug around a wagon of useless rocks, each one collected from a meaningful place, but useless all the same.

"I don't know," he whispers. "I don't think I want to."

"You don't have to call it an addiction," Scott says gently. "It's an alarming word. But when you're repeatedly hurting yourself and you don't want to, it isn't normal."

He says something else that Jimmy doesn't understand as he turns his head to check the door, Scott's voice becoming distorted in his bad ear. When he turns back, Scott's smiling softly.

"You're two days sober," he says, voice bursting with something like pride. "And you're already taking all the right steps."

"Two days," Jimmy groans. It feels like it's been weeks already, his scars constantly nagging at the back of his mind. And he has to be clean from self-harm for—for forever?

He isn't strong enough for that. He doesn't want to be strong enough.

"Three days tomorrow," Scott encourages. "Three days is enough. And then four days after that. One day at a time."

Scott is too perfect for him. He's such an excellent person, and Jimmy just can't measure up.

One day at a time.

"I can try that," Jimmy says. Scott smiles, one gloved hand coming up to rest on Jimmy's jaw.

"I'm right here, okay? Every day."

And then, at Jimmy's little nod, Scott closes the gap between them and kisses him.

Scott's a good kisser, if Jimmy does say so himself. He's responsive, and tends to let Jimmy lead, and Jimmy really wants to lead right now.

He lightly scrapes one of his sharp lower teeth against Scott's bottom lip, smiles against Scott's mouth when his partner actually moans a little, lets his lips fall further open. So ridiculously sensitive, his lover is.

Jimmy's about to go a little further—he really does love kissing Scott, it feels like taking care of him in some odd, protective way, it makes him feel like he can do something right—when a knock on the door startles them apart.

The door opens a crack, and Ilphas calls in, "Milords, it's been seven minutes, so you had really better make yourselves decent if you aren't."

Jimmy blushes; the blood drains from Scott's face.

"Just one moment," Scott calls over his shoulder, standing up straight from where he'd been leaning back on the table.

He fixes both their veils, and Jimmy cracks one last smile at him, hidden by the thin green fabric.

Then he's being ushered out of the room, and many more people are being ushered in, and Jimmy has to return to his studies for another half hour before heading off for a walk through the gardens.

The itching under his skin quiets just a little.

And Jimmy lives one day at a time.

-

It's about a year later when he relapses.

Jimmy's had a bad day—he's been in meetings all week, trying to see if the House Blossom Alliance can be reformed, and it's been stressful all around. And then today, in one of those meetings, fWhip had made it clear that he believed Jimmy had entirely invented the years of torment at the hands of him and Sausage and Joey.

It had been a moment where Jimmy had floundered. His hands had clenched into fists, bile had risen in the back of his throat, he'd stared hard at the table while Katherine called for fWhip to behave himself.

And now, arriving home in Rivendell, Jimmy can barely hide in his room fast enough.

fWhip's right, there's no proof that any of it ever happened—there's no way to verify it, no way to show that Jimmy had been through everything because none of his scars are more than faint lines now except the ones from the Void, and those ones have a clear origin that isn't necessarily fWhip—and Scott doesn't count as an eyewitness because he's Jimmy's husband, he's biased, he could be lying about seeing any of it because Jimmy doesn't have any way to corroborate his story and everything itches under his skin and it's so bad—

Moving almost by instinct, Jimmy stumbles up from where he's collapsed on the floor, up and over to his bedside rug. He pulls up a corner of it, and there the knife is.

It's been hidden there for at least a year, its oiled sheath still showing Jimmy's fingerprints from when he'd last touched it to hide it.

He barely thinks for a moment, his stomach going all cold as he realizes what he's about to do—he's been clean for a year, he can't do this he doesn't really want to does he?—but he thinks more about where he's going to start and how to keep himself from being interrupted than he does anything else.

He locks himself in the washroom, strips off his brown leather waistcoat and green tunic and surveys his torso for a moment.

There used to be a scar, long and thin, right down his sternum. He traces his skin there lightly with the tip of the knife, hair standing on end.

Then he pushes the knife in.

It hurts. It hurts a lot more than it used to, he thinks—it's been a while since he was properly injured, and it's hard to think when there's a knife in him.

After the first cut, he falls back into the routine as if he'd cut just yesterday. His hands find the vague spots that were once twisted scars and carves them out by muscle memory, stabbing the knife deeper and deeper as his hands shake and his knees go weak.

And then he reaches the scales on his face and his hand falters.

He's covered in blood. He's absolutely soaked in it, his face stark-white against all that red.

He relapsed.

The knife slips from his numb fingers and clatters to the floor. Jimmy feels himself sway, the sight of so much blood making his head woozy.

He sits down, hard, on the floor, the world tilting a little. He isn't going to—it isn't that bad. He's definitely done worse to himself, even if it's been a year.

A year. He was clean for an entire year, and all of that is now gone.

He kind of doesn't want to clean up. What's the point? He might as well keep cutting and never stop, seeing as he's already lost literally all of his progress.

But he doesn't, for some reason. He doesn't touch the scales on his face and hands, fully grown in now when he'd never let them before.

Instead, he follows old routine. He gets his wet cloth from the basin and wipes down his body, watching the wounds slowly scab over until no more blood is seeping out. Then he pulls his tunic back on over stinging wounds, leaving the waist coat for another day, and rolls his trouser legs down.

Now what is he supposed to do?

He wants to keep it hidden. That old itch that had been a quiet background noise for many months now is roaring for attention, pushing and pulling at his mind.

He can't tell anyone about this, or else they'll make him stop.

Which—he wants to stop. He literally wants to stop, but he can't stop thinking of ways to hide it, to keep his knife as his own and cover the marks he's made.

He isn't going to do that. He isn't going to hide things from Scott anymore.

So Jimmy sits on their bed and gets out his communicator, tapping out a message to his husband with trembling fingers.

I need help. if you're busy don't worry about it it isn't urgent :)

Jimmy tosses his communicator across the bed, hugs his arms around himself. Why did he send a smiley face? That was dumb. Then Scott will turn up later and think that it isn't an actual issue, even though Jimmy relapsed and everything is suddenly so bad.

But he can't bother him by telling him it's important, because Scott is currently in his weekend planning meeting to prepare to go to the Codlands for the next week, and that's very important and if Jimmy interrupts it Scott might not be able to go home with him this week.

So he waits there, hugging himself, his cuts hurting just a little too much for him to forget them.

He doesn't cry. When he used to cut, it would disconnect his emotions. His head would clear a little more with every dig of the knife, and he would finish feeling numb with a buzz of satisfaction.

The satisfaction feels more sickly than anything else. He sits there, stewing in the feeling, staring at nothing.

He can't act normal. He's not sure how he thought he would be able to pretend that nothing was wrong. He can't even do that while alone.

Jimmy waits there, feeling rather small, curled up on the end of their bed. He doesn't move. He doesn't even readjust when he feels a cut on his side pull open and stick to his tunic. Shame. He liked this tunic.

He's not sure how long he waits before the sitting room door opens and he hears Scott take off his boots. He knows it's Scott, instinctively—Scott always turns the doorknob when shutting the door so that it closes softly, and Jimmy knows exactly the sounds it makes when Scott pulls free the laces of his boots and sets them on the wooden rack.

Sure enough, Scott comes through the bedroom side door, offering Jimmy a soft smile before unclasping an official-looking cape of sorts (his wings shake themselves a couple of times) and laying it on the back of his desk chair, setting his crown on the desk.

"I got your message," Scott says. "Sorry I took a little while, I only had a few more items of business to take care of before it was all finished. How was your meeting? How's Katherine doing?"

Jimmy stands, twisting his hands in the fabric of his shirt, carefully not looking at the cut across his lower palm that he'd made just earlier.

"Um, she's good," he says, not quite meeting Scott's eyes. "The meeting didn't go the best."

Scott clicks his tongue, lifts a necklace off himself and sets it on the desk beside his crown. "I should've been there. I don't like it when you have to talk to any of them without me there."

"Gem and Katherine and Pix were there," Jimmy says. "He wasn't going to attack me. He just . . . he said some stuff."

"I'll kill him," Scott says instantly. "I'm the Champion of Aeor, I can take him, easy."

"And I'm a thousand-year-old demigod, we all could take him," Jimmy reminds him. "But that's not really . . . that's not what I need help with. But it's related, I guess."

"What, did fWhip do something?"

"Not . . . not exactly."

A frown creases Scott's face. He crosses the room, sits down on the bed, and pats the spot beside him.

Jimmy joins him, almost reluctantly. It would be easier to just tell him from the doorway, then take off running before Scott can get angry or sad. But he sits beside his husband and does his best not to flinch when Scott's wing comes to settle around him.

"You're upset, darling," Scott says, tone careful and soft. "What's wrong?"

There's no tears. Not yet. Only a feeling like he's going to throw up.

"I relapsed," Jimmy manages, voice barely above a whisper. "I cut myself. I relapsed."

"Oh . . . oh, love. . . ."

"I didn't mean to," he adds. "Just—fWhip said some things and I couldn't get them out of my head."

"I'll kill him," Scott says again. "I'm actually going to kill him, he made you feel like that and—"

"Scott. . . ."

Scott stops at Jimmy's small, pleading word. He pauses, then takes Jimmy's hands in his own.

"I love you," he says seriously, and Jimmy's heart flips at the reminder. "Whatever fWhip said means absolutely nothing to me, okay? You are incredible, darling. Now, do you need any medical attention? How bad is it?"

Jimmy's about to wave him off, say that it isn't bad at all. He's never liked to admit to pain.

But he's learning how to be better. He doesn't want to lie to his husband.

"I'll be fine," he says carefully. "It was pretty bad, though. I—I really messed up. I basically just, uh, stopped short of my scales."

Scott breathes in and out, slow and steady. Then he looks Jimmy hard in the eye.

"I'm glad you're okay," he says, face determined. "I'm sorry you went through that. Do you have anything that I need to keep safe?"

"Knife," Jimmy says. "It's in the washroom, on the sink. I cleaned up, so don't worry about . . . anything."

Scott nods, squeezes Jimmy's hands before slipping away, through the sitting room and into the washroom. After a couple of moments, he returns, smile a little tight around the corners.

Jimmy swallows back that horrible ill feeling. He was an entire year sober, and one little mocking statement from fWhip sent him right back to day one.

“I failed,” he whispers eventually. Finally, tears burn at his eyes.

He failed. An entire year.

“You didn’t . . . that doesn’t change your worth,” Scott tells him, once again weaving their hands together. “It doesn’t change anything. You just keep trying.”

“Yeah, but—it does, really, because—”

“Failing doesn’t mean you’re worthless,” Scott says strongly. “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It only means you try again.”

Scott knows that. Jimmy knows how deeply Scott struggled, those weeks living in the refugee camp, with feeling like he was anything but a failure. Scott’s worked with those feelings for a very long time—Jimmy still remembers from the other month how Scott held him so tightly and almost cried over that first time that he was late to answer Jimmy’s messages, so long ago, how badly he felt he’d failed him.

Scott knows how it feels to be a failure.

Jimmy’s pretty well-acquainted with it too, to be fair. He’s felt like a failure for most of his short memory.

But that’s okay.

“I’m a loser,” he tries half-heartedly.

“Don’t say such things about my husband.”

Hearing Scott call him his husband releases some of the tension Jimmy’s holding in his chest and he collapses onto Scott, his wounds twinging. Scott huffs out a laugh, falls back against the bed, pulling Jimmy down with him.

“The urge is a lot stronger, now,” Jimmy warns Scott, voice partially muffled by his husband’s tunic. “I might . . . I might fail again.”

The last words come out small, shameful. Scott hugs Jimmy tight.

“Okay,” he says simply. “I wish I could fight it for you, but I’m here to support you, no matter what.”

That’s all Jimmy needs.

He can do it, he thinks.

“One day at a time, darling.”

“One day at a time.”